101–110 of 305 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it is the OBD II port, and is typically used for on board diagnostics and connects directly to the ECU. The bluetooth "dongles" have been around for a number of years.
I was under the impression that it was mandated by the government for all US cars in the 90's. Is that not the case?
Wait, so this 69$ little contraption can read the code behind a check engine light? That's $100 in savings that would otherwise go to the Car Mechanic Mafia. Pre-ordered.
It might be as easy as turning the car on/off/on/off/on in less than 10 seconds and reading the digital odometer, or as complicated as a 10-step process that spits out the codes to you as a number of flashes of the dashboard display.
That said, having an OBD reader could make you everyone's new best friend.
From my experience that is exactly what kills 99% of smartphone batteries...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh I see what you mean. I bet it could. But how would it ever turn its self back on? I mean if it is receiving OBD-II information then it knows when the car is running, but if it isn't (which it wouldn't be if it is "off") then it couldn't know to switch its self on. Kind of a chick/egg problem.
They could put it in a low power sleep mode, and wake up once ever x seconds to check if the engine is on. You could run something like this for months/years on a car battery.
I've seen these before. There are several companies working on similar products (and things like HUDs you can get off of eBay which show you OBD-II information). The main problem with these (all of them!) is that the OBD II was never designed to be used like this. It will run the device 24/7 even when the car is turned off. So it will run down your battery in a similar way to leaving the cabin light on would do... No…
We're paranoid about not running your car's battery down. When the ignition is off, we consume less than 1 mA. By itself, the Automatic Link would take 3-4 years to drain even a cheap battery.
Let's say your average battery has 40AH. That means it can provide 1A for 40h (or better, the product time(h) x current(A) = 40 for a charged battery) @ 12v
If your lamps consume 24W (I'm guessing), that's 2A, it means it would go from fully charget to nothing in 20h. But of course, your battery is usually not 100% and you need a certain battery capacity to start the engine.
Even if the consumption of this device is 1W while idle (which is really an exaggerated value), the device uses around 0.084A and the battery would take 480h to go from 100% to 0% (or about 20 days)
My guess is that an unpowered car uses more than that by itself, so this dongle is not an issue, unless you're leaving it unattended, you can unplug it but will probably run out of battery nonetheless.
I've seen these before. There are several companies working on similar products (and things like HUDs you can get off of eBay which show you OBD-II information). The main problem with these (all of them!) is that the OBD II was never designed to be used like this. It will run the device 24/7 even when the car is turned off. So it will run down your battery in a similar way to leaving the cabin light on would do... No…
We're paranoid about not running your car's battery down. When the ignition is off, we consume less than 1 mA. By itself, the Automatic Link would take 3-4 years to drain even a cheap battery.
Does this also connect to the CAN Bus, if so will you offer a simple high level API to it. I would buy one now if it did. Background: I showed Lockitron to my dad a while back, and he wanted it for his car. ie unlock/lock from his phone, or even by just walking up, like keyless-go on the mercs. I did a bit of googleling, and it seemed like it should be pretty simple. Connect a dongle to the diagnostic port (inc CAN b…
> unlock/lock from his phone Liability hell .
How does the engine trouble codes feature compare to something like VAG-COM?